Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, Susanna Clarke ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ I’ve entered tome season so the #bookstack posts are going to be less frequent and really tall when I get around to it. I’m solo-posting this since it was exceptionally good. Almost 800 pages (I think I developed either arm muscles or carpal tunnel from reading it but I’m not sure which yet) with copious fictional footnotes that I never knew I needed in my reading life. Between this and all the Jane Austen, I’ve discovered I’m a total Anglophile and bring on the early 1800s Brit Lit because I’m here for it especially if it’s got stuffy English magic. It’s set during the Napoleonic wars and the only big difference from normal English life is that magic is legit except it’s been largely lost over the centuries since this guy called The Raven King left the North, and no one really knows how to practice it anymore. It’s also the perfect Libra-Scorpio cusp season read; frenemy magicians who represent very opposite sides of the scales (fear, restraint, and repression vs boldness, arrogance, and liberation) struggle together and against each other to revive English Magic. And basically they have no idea what they are doing, are super self-involved, do almost everything wrong, get in a huge fight with each other, and unleash Old Magic hell on themselves and much of 1800s Europe as a side effect. Also a creepily fantastic bad little fairy man gets in the mix and wreaks havoc and steals a lady’s finger and kidnaps a bunch of humans and Jonathan Strange the bold/arrogant magician helps defeat Napoleon by creating ghost ships out of rain and making dead mutilated soldiers talk and changing the topography of all the countries the troops occupy. There’s also some good old romance and non-magic intrigue thrown in but mainly it’s all spooky magic and bad decision-making. This book is a commitment, an undertaking, and often slow, but it’s thoroughly enjoyable and superbly well-written. I read Piranesi by Susanna Clark before I read this, and I think it would have significantly reshaped my appreciation for the former if I’d read this one first. #bookstagram #booknerd https://www.instagram.com/p/CkWcwEzhDM2/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=